Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

8

1902

T HE G ENERAL E DUCATION B OARD (GEB) WAS INCORPORATED BY AN ACT OF THE U NITED States Congress. Approved January 12, 1902, the General Education Board was endowed by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., for the purpose of establishing an educational laboratory to experiment with early innovations in education.

1905

I N 1905 THE I NTERCOLLEGIATE S OCIALIST S OCIETY (ISS) WAS FOUNDED IN N EW Y ORK C ITY by Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Clarence Darrow and others. Its permanent headquarters were established at the Rand School of Social Studies in 1908 and ISS became the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) in 1921. John Dewey became president of the League for Industrial Democracy in 1939. T HE C ARNEGIE F OUNDATION FOR THE A DVANCEMENT OF T EACHING WAS FOUNDED IN 1905. Henry S. Pritchett served as the Foundation’s first president. Pritchett was the author of What Is Religion and Other Student Questions (Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1906), Relations of Denominations to Colleges (1908), and A Woman’s Opportunities in Christian Industry and Business (1907).

1906

N ATIONAL E DUCATION A SSOCIATION (NEA) BECAME A FEDERALLY CHARTERED ASSOCIATION for teachers in 1906 under the authority of H.R. 10501. Originally founded in 1857, it was known as the National Teachers Association until 1870.

1908

I N 1908 I TALIAN EDUCATOR , THE LATE M ARIA M ONTESSORI (1870–1952), DEVELOPED A method of teaching—relying on guidance and training of senses rather than more rigid control of children’s activities—which would be very influential throughout the rest of the century. Montessori was a doctor who, after graduating from medical school in Rome, took a position at a psychiatric clinic and became interested in helping retarded children. Her pedagogical mentor became Edouard Seguin, a French physician who worked with retarded children and who promoted the idea that having the children work with concrete objects helped their physical and mental development. Montessori opened her first Casa dei Bambini (Montessori school) in Rome in 1907. She created a classroom climate in which her belief that a child’s “individual liberty” would be